Companies and teams come in all shapes and sizes and often the responsibility of approving leave requests needs to be handled by multiple people. The difficulty with this lies in the potential for cross-wires, for example, Joe might have denied a request but Paul said it was ok to take the time off, or Paul might have approved a request and so has Joe, is that a double booking…? What if you need to cancel, do you have to tell them both?

We aim to solve this problem with LeeveBot and in this post I’ll take you through the approval process step by step. In this scenario, Jane is requesting leave and her team has two approvers Paul and Joe.

Jane confirms her leave request details.In our feedback message we inform Jane who the leave request has been sent to for approval. At this stage the request is pending and if neither Paul or Joe approve or deny the request straight away, Jane may want to follow up with them.

3. Paul and Joe receive leave request

Paul and Joe are notified of the new leave request.As soon as Jane confirms her leave request, Paul and Joe are sent a direct message from LeeveBot prompting them to Approve or Deny the request.

4. Paul approves the leave request

Paul approves the leave request.Joe’s message updates to reflect Paul’s approval of the request.When Paul approves the leave request, Joe’s message is updated to reflect this. The action buttons are removed and Joe is informed who approved (or denied) the request.

Jane is also sent a direct message informing her that her leave request has been approved:

Jane is sent a message confirming her leave request approval.

What happens when a leave request is cancelled?

There are two scenarios as to when a leave request is cancelled. Using our approval example either Jane can cancel her own leave request, in which case Paul and Joe will be sent direct message notifying them of this:

Paul and Joe are notified that Jane has cancelled her leave request.Or alternatively either Paul or Joe could cancel the request, for example if Joe cancelled the request Jane and Paul would be sent direct messages informing them of this:

Jane is notified that Joe cancelled her leave request.Paul is notified that Joe has cancelled Jane’s leave request.

ConclusionSo, that’s how LeeveBot handles multiple approvers. Our goal is to create an intuitive user experience that takes the headache out of leave management and avoids crossed-wires by handling the approval process in an informative way.